Quotes of the day

posted at 8:30 pm on June 12, 2011 by Allahpundit

“The American people are enduring the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, stagnating living standards, an economy slow to create jobs, a government saddled by gigantic deficits, and a sense that our politicians, including our president, are not loading the bases for a great recovery. Our politicians remind us of what the Peanuts cartoon character Linus said to Lucy after she asked him why he polished only the fronts of his shoes: ‘I’m interested only in what people think of me as I enter the room.’

“We waste vast amounts of money on subsidies for housing, agriculture, and health, many of which distort the economy and do little for long-term growth, while we spend too little on science, technology, innovation, infrastructure, and education. Who would have imagined that the credit rating of the United States would be put on financial watch by Standard & Poor’s? Or that a country of pioneers and self-made men would evolve into a culture of entitlement, where special interest groups take bite after bite out of the total national wealth through special appropriations, earmarks, tax breaks, and other favors that are all easier to initiate than to end?…

“These are grave anxieties, and yet it would be un-American to lose hope entirely. Of all Alexis de Tocqueville’s judgments, none was truer than this one: ‘The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.’ To which I would add: Make haste with the repairs.”

***
“Myth No. 1: This is a temporary blip, and then it’s full steam ahead

“True, only 12.2% of economists surveyed in the past few days by the Philadelphia Fed believe that the current backsliding will develop into a double-dip recession (though that percentage is up significantly from the start of the year). Avoiding a double dip is not the same as creating growth that’s strong enough to revive the job market. In fact, there’s an unfortunate snowball effect with growth and employment when they are weak. It used to take roughly six months for the U.S. to get back to a normal employment picture after a recession; the McKinsey Global Institute estimates it will take five years this time around. That lingering unemployment cuts GDP growth by reducing consumer demand, which in turn makes it harder to create jobs. We would need to create 187,000 jobs a month, growing at a rate of 3.3%, to get to a healthy 5% unemployment rate by 2020. At the current rate of growth and job creation, we would maybe get halfway there by that time…

“And let’s not forget the youth-unemployment crisis. There’s now a generation of young workers who are in danger of being permanently sidetracked in the labor markets and disconnected from society. Research shows that the long-term unemployed tend to be depressed, suffer greater health problems and even have shorter life expectancy. The youth unemployment rate is now 24%, compared with the overall rate of 9.1%. If and when these young people return to work, they’ll earn 20% less over the next 15 to 20 years than peers who were employed. That increases the wealth divide that is one of the root causes of growing political populism in our country. While Republicans have pushed back against spending on broad government-sponsored work programs and retraining, it would behoove the Administration to keep pushing for a short-term summer-work program to target the most at-risk groups.

***
“Brownstein goes on to report that what economists call the ‘idleness rate’ is rising. ‘The share of Americans younger than 24 neither at work nor in school has steadily increased since 2007,’ he writes. ‘That disconnection creates the risk of what Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz calls ‘a lost generation.’

“This is but one manifestation of how our prolonged economic crisis is having far-reaching social effects. We are in the process of changing habits and patterns that will alter our country in fairly profound ways. And what’s most worrisome of all is that there’s no evidence that our economy is turning around. As Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal puts it, in terms of economic policy, the Obama armory is empty. ‘From within the exclusively demand-side context of the president’s economic policy,’ he writes, ‘there are no more bullets in the carbines. This president is now virtually defenseless against the inexorable forces of the U.S. economy.’…

“Our economy is getting weaker rather than stronger. The trajectory is down rather than up. And the ramifications of all this may well be with us long after Mr. Obama has left the presidency.”

***
“Johnson, a 23-year-old college graduate with a new accounting degree in hand, is an intern at a commercial real estate firm. He would like something more permanent. But many of his college friends aren’t finding work, either, and he’s counting on a breakthrough in the economy.

“‘We have to do something different,’ he said, pausing at a downtown street corner on a sweltering afternoon.

“Johnson supported libertarian-leaning Republican Ron Paul, a Texas congressman, for president in 2008, but he’s now open to giving Obama a try.

“‘I feel like there’s better out there, but, honestly, I’m not seeing the better right now,’ he said. ‘So he may be the best we have.'”

***
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median period of unemployment is now nine months — the longest it’s been since they’ve been tracking the numbers. Long-term unemployment is worse than in the Depression. Life goes slowly waiting for a fast-food job to open up.

“This is Main Street, Obamaville: All bumps, no road. But shimmering on the distant horizon, beyond the shuttered diner and the foreclosed homes, is a state-of-the-art electric car, the new Fiat Mirage, that should be wheeling into town in a half-decade or so provided it can find somewhere to charge. ‘We will be able to look back and tell our children,’ declared King Barack the Modest of his own candidacy in 2008, ‘this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.’ Great news for the oceans! Meanwhile, back on dry land, a quarter of American mortgages are ‘underwater’ — that’s to say, the home ‘owners’ owe more than the joint is worth. In Harry Reid’s Nevada, it’s 63 percent. Perhaps Obama’s Aquatic Bodies Water-Level Regulatory Authority, no doubt headed by Jamie Gorelick or Franklin Raines or some other Democrat worthy, could have its jurisdiction extended to the Nevada desert.

“The American Dream, 2011: You pay four bucks a gallon to commute between your McJob and your underwater housing to prop up a spendaholic, grabafeelic, paramilitarized bureaucracy-without-end bankrupting your future at the rate of a fifth of a billion dollars every hour.”

***
“President Obama on Saturday continued to make his case for patience about the economic recovery following a spate of disappointing news last week that suggested a turnaround wasn’t as close as expected…

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LOL. REALLY have to run for work, but it was amazing watching him spin the Palin e-mails, too. Joe the Idiot. Not that the media did it but that she’s so popular she MADE them do it. You know, she won’t go away.

Dinosaur media need to sell their stories. And no one’s buying or believing the official lines. Not even the self deluded ones fabricating their lies believe them at the moment.

Making no profit, no sales, losing money hits home hard, all the harder inside the most entrenched, established media fortifications as NYT, TIME, etc.

Conservative voters don’t own the monopoly on being unemployed in America today.

It isn’t simply that Americans are unemployed and underemployed under Obama’s administration, economically penalized by Obama policies.

It’s the rank antipathy of this administration’s “One Voice” that angers everyone suffering economic ruin. “Trickle Down Poverty” has collected into the collective debt swamp of no return. Unemployment was high amongst college graduates attempting to enter the work force back in the 70s, as well. But then at least the typical cost of higher education didn’t place the graduates into debtors’ prison for life, employed or not.

Today, claiming unemployment figures below 10% only enrages the many above 20% unemployed Americans being told that essentially they don’t exist, certainly not being recognized officially.

Or that a country of pioneers and self-made men would evolve into a culture of entitlement, where special interest groups take bite after bite out of the total national wealth through special appropriations, earmarks, tax breaks, and other favors that are all easier to initiate than to end?… We see them everyday, fawning and praising politicians and the govt while seeking crumbs of money for their pet projects. No wonder we are going broke, teaching shrimp to use a treadmill and Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly. What a shame on us. Amen to the make haste on the repairs.

“spread the wealth” => 2011 economy
Was it really that difficult to predict what this guy was going to do?

RDE2010 on June 13, 2011 at 8:25 AM

I keep hoping that this Administration will ultimately leave us better off because such slogans as “spread the wealth” will be discredited forever. Now we can see in real time that it means “spread the misery.”

I am so grateful that all of my young adult children are working or have found jobs considering the unemployment news.

My eldest has been working consistently since he was 17, almost 8 years now. He has a good job with good benefits that he enjoys.

My daughter wasn’t able to hold a job earlier because of her school and dance schedule, but was offered a job within 3 days of applying and it comes with full benefits after 90 days. Pretty good for a first time, almost minimum wage job.

My youngest just graduated from high school and got a great job as a merchandiser for Coke at $12.35/hour plus shift differential and full benefits. He’ll be joining the Air National Guard later this fall and train to be a mechanic.

For kids just graduating from college, you have to network with people in your field. Just applying for tons of jobs doesn’t work since HR receives hundreds of applications for every position. You really have to know someone.